Helpers and mobile phones

if your helper is constantly on the phone at the risk of neglecting your child then you have much deeper issues than just the mobile phone - this would be a symptom of a much deeper issue - lack of responsibility - which would be cause for reconsidering having her with you taking care of your child.

my helper is fantastic and we know she is responsible and we trust her to spend a day with our child even though i know she will now and again take a call when she is with my toddler (while he is watching tv for example or playing safely in an enclosed space). i see absolutely no problem with that. as one of the above posters said, she has a life and a family and to "ban" her for communicating with anyone during "work hours" (which for them can be quite long!) i think is just plain cruel and ridiculous.

I am sorry to sound like a grouch but I totally disagree with some of the above. I have told my helper if I catch her on her phone (unless it is me calling her) whilst she is looking after my daughter it will be instant dismissal. I have seen too many helpers in our complex plonking children down in a common area and then just sitting on their phones for ages, showing no interest or attention to the child. Yes, so far I trust my helper, but she is still fairly new and I don't want her to start getting into bad habits. As far as I'm concerned, if my daughter does not have her full attention when she is babysitting her, she is not doing her job. I don't mind if she does our shopping and sits on her phone while out, but not whilst looking after my girl. And I don't feel cruel or ridiculous for doing so. We have a great community here where we live, and many of us mothers know others helpers, and keep each other up to date on what we see them doing. It is just making sure they keep on their toes and don't take advantage of being away from their employer.

obviously, to each (mother) her own (style of managing her helper). i personally trust my helper 100% to use her common sense and good judgement when deciding whether or not to pick up a call if her phone rings while she is watching my child. from my own personal experience giving your helper the sense that you trust her to make these decisions fosters a much better overall mother-helper relationship which to me is very very important. clearly those helpers who are on the phone constantly while at playgrounds with children are not responsible and this is cause for termination. But i know that my helper is not like that and for me personally i see no reason to have to lay down such a rule with her. it is all very individual and i was just giving my opinion. of course if you are not 100% comfortable trusting your helper 100% yet and/or if she is new/young, that may be a different story from mine.

We provided our helper with "house rules" before she started. In regard to telephone we said:
"TELEPHONE
We need to be able to contact you at all times; and would prefer that your personal phone calls were kept to a minimum during working hours (ie; only a couple of calls). Of course we understand that there may be urgent calls that you need to receive, but please try and limit these."

I want to be able to contact my helper during the day. Can't very well tell her she can't use the phone and then not be able to contact her!

I agree though. How much is too much and how can I be sure that she isn't on it all day? I don't, I guess I did have to trust her to a point.

if your helper is responsible for looking after your kids and you're giving them the freedom to carry a phone around you're asking for trouble. no matter how good one is a multi-tasking, the phone distracts the mind and it's easy to 'not see' an accident in the making. although i've said no phones during work hours, i know for a fact that my maid talks to her friends when my child sleeping or when he's watching tv when i'm out. that's ok as long as she's not directly dealing with my child. it's all about trust and how loose you let the reins.

All the mums who ban phone calls - can we assume that you adhere to the same strict standards you set your helpers? ie. that you never take personal calls of any duration while you are the adult responsible for the child?
Do you allow your helper to visit the bathroom while they are on duty? That may necessitate leaving the child alone for up to 3 minutes: of course, parents never do such things.....
Seriously, helpers are a logn way from home. By enforcing their emotional cutt off from friends and family, surely you'll just create an unhappy helper??

Great to see you back in form HappyV with your extreme views and extreme examples.

We don't have any rules in our house for phone use but our helper knows it would be a big problem for us if she started behaving like lots of helpers in our building do,i.e talking on the phone for the entire time they take kids to the playground etc.

I can see that some helpers do however need rules. Hell, we've had two previous helpers that did. If you didn't spell it out for them they would do it and then plead ignorance. Not all helpers are created equally. Some have common sense, some don't. Some are willfully disrespectful, for others it just comes naturally! And of course, there are plenty who are great and do their job just fine.